The Anti-British Stance of Marxist Political Parties in Ceylon and...

The Anti-British Stance of Marxist Political Parties in Ceylon and the Indian Independence League

S. N. ArseculeratneEmeritus Professor of Microbiology,

Faculty of Medicine, University of Peradeniya

Received: 29 September 2013Accepted: 22 July 2014

Abstract

The movement for Indian independence from British rule was sponsored by the “Quit India” demand that began in India in 1942. These activities spread to the Malay Peninsulathen under British rule. Some peninsular Ceylonese enlisted in two units of the Indian Independence Movement, the Indian Independence League (IIL)- its political arm, and the Indian National Army (INA)- its military arm; only afew of them used direct militarism. The politically-active Ceylonese in their homeland expressed their anti-British agitation through political rhetoric rather than through military action. This reviewpaper documents, in their own words, the anti-British stance of these leaders in war-time Ceylon.

Keywords: Anti-British struggle, Marxist parties in Ceylon, Indian Independence

League

1. Introduction

During World War II in Asia, an anti-British revolutionary movement

commenced in the Malay Peninsula; it gathered momentum when the Indian

anti-British, anti-colonial Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose left Germany

where he was in exile, and returned to Asia to lead the anti-British revolutionary

movement with Japanese sponsorship. The Japanese aim was more directed

towards inhibiting Indian support for the British rather than supporting India in

her struggle for political Independence; moreover Japan needed critical supplies

(tin, oil and rubber) for her war effort while ultimately it was aimed at the

Japanese-dominated “Co-Prosperity Sphere of Greater East Asia”.

Modern Sri Lanka Studies - Vol . IV , No. 2 , 2013

An initial conference of Indian freedom-fighters was held in Tokyo in

1942, and an inaugural conference of the Indian Independence League (IIL), the

political arm of the Indian Independence Movement, was next held in Bangkok;

an Indian National Army (INA) was formed there as its military arm. The

formation of the IIL had support from the political “Quit India” Movement that

started in India in 1942. The INA opened an office on the Malayan border in south

Siam (Thailand). Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian, anti-British nationalist

revolutionary who was in exile in Germany to escape arrest by the British, arrived

in Malaya to lead the Indian Independence Movement. The IIL had its

headquarters in Singapore while the INA operated from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaya.

Some Ceylonese in their homeland during World War II fought with Britain and

her Allies in Europe during the 1939 – 1945 World War II (WWII). A contrary

militaristic movement evolved in India, and more notably in the Malay Peninsula

(Malaya and Singapore) that involved a few of the 5,000 emigrant Ceylonese in

the Peninsula; they organized themselves with Japanese support against the

British, under the leadership of the Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose.

Their direct militaristic activity was however on a very minor scale. As pointed

out through personal interviews of emigrant Sinhalese residing in contemporary

times in the Peninsula (Arseculeratne, 1991), and reviewed below, the

participation of these few in Japanese-sponsored anti-British activity was rather

for self-protection from Japanese harassment rather than through anti-British

zeal. The expatriate Ceylonese in the Malay Peninsula who enlisted were

militaristically overt; they were trained in “…ideology, military and physical skills,

propaganda and espionage by Japanese instructors….”(Arseculeratne, 1991),

while others who joined the Japanese-sponsored IIL and INA and their Ceylonese

units the Ceylon Department (CD) and the Lanka Unit (LU), did so for protection

against Japanese harassment(Arseculeratne, 1991). For a few Ceylonese who

enlisted in the LU, route marches, handling of arms, bayonet-charging, handling

of machine guns and hand-grenades, espionage and sabotage were tasks for


02 S. N. Arseculeratne

which they were trained, mainly in Penang of the Malay Peninsula. Two

Malaysian Ceylonese were sent to Ceylon but were captured and shot by the

British.

Political groups of Ceylonese in the homeland expressed anti-British

agitation without direct military activity.The Ceylonese political leaders in their

homeland, had theoretical rather than practical militaristic anti-British political

activity during WWII. They expressed their political views through sponsorship of

strikes in the labour force on British estates in Ceylon beginning in 1939, while

some of the Lanka SamaSamajaParty(LSSP) leaders were jailed (Muthiah and

Wanasinghe, 1996). The LSSP (see below) in Ceylon, fomented anti-imperialistic

attitudes amongst university students “…. to form the conscious and militant

vanguard of the proletarian revolution'' (Muthiah and Wanasinghe, 1996);

however no militant wing was apparently formed in Ceylon, contrasting with the

INA in the Malay Peninsula.

The oral history of the Sinhalese in war-time Malaya and Singapore has

been documented in depth (Arseculeratne, 1991). That book did not record the

stance of the anti-British 'left'-oriented political parties that existed in Ceylon

during the war years 1939 – 1945. This review, while discussing the background

to the war in South East Asia, places in perspective, verbatim reports in more

recent years, from the leaders of these latter political groups, on their anti-British

stance in war-time Ceylon.

2. The Background

The Indian Independence Movement had two complementary organs -

the Indian Independence League (IIL Azad Hind Sangh, the political arm, with

headquarters in Singapore) and its military arm, the Indian National Army (INA,

Azad Hind Fauj); Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaya was the birth-place and hub


03The Anti-British Stance of Marxist Political Parties in Ceylon

of the military arm of the Indian Independence Movement. The Indian National

Army (INA) was founded by Rash Behari Bose , a militant Bengali, and it was led

by Subhas Chandra Bose when he returned from exile in Germany to Malaya in

1943. The Indian view was that the INA's aim was the armed fight for Indian

independence from Britain, while the Japanese wanted the INA for infiltration

and subversion of the British Indian Army and for labour, but not for the invasion

of India. In 1942, an inaugural conference was held in Bangkok, for a more

representative assembly; Indian delegates from various parts of Japanese-

occupied and Axis territories – Japan, Manchukuo (Manchuria), Burma, Hong

Kong, Borneo, Malaya, Java Thailand, Shanghai, Manila and Indochina attended

this conference but there is no mention of the participation of Sinhalese or even

of the Ceylonese of the Malay Peninsula.

Gladwin Kotelawala(a nephew of a later Prime Minister of Ceylon, Sir John

Kotelawala), who was in Malaya at this time

“approached Subhas Chandra Bose, whom he happened to know

personally. Bose was very sympathetic on the plight of the

Ceylonese in Malaya… and suggested the formation of a Ceylon

Department within the Indian Independence League…”

(Arseculeratne,1991).

Bose's speeches in Malaya impressed Gladwin Kotelawala. In the early

1940s, additional, subsidiary units were formed in war-time Malaya to aid the

anti-British movement- the Ceylon Department(CD) that had Lionel Dodampe as

Regimental Clerk and the Lanka Unit (LU),with Gladwin Kotelawalaas Secretary,

under Bose's sponsorship; some Malay peninsular Sinhalese got recruited to

these units. These two units were composed almost entirely of the peninsular

Sinhalese who were either migrants to the Peninsula or were citizens there. It is

of importance that no anti-British units comparable with the LU and CD were



formed in contemporary British-colonial Ceylon for the obvious reason that anti-

British agitators would have been imprisoned by the British, as happened to the

Ceylonese 'Left-oriented' politicians as mentioned below. Bose's anti-British

revolutionary activities and consequent impending arrest, compelled him to

leave India for Germany.

The CD in Malaya had only three (Sinhalese) staff members. Two

Sinhalese in these units “threatened and intimidated” other reluctant Peninsular

Sinhalese with visits from the Japanese military police, the Kempeitai. Lionel

Dodampe the Regimental Clerk of the LU recalled (Arseculeratne, 1991) that

they,

“…as volunteers of the Independence Movement, went to see

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose … he explained that we will be

given one month's military training and then we'll be given

special jobs…”. It is significant that “… despite the ten-fold

greater number of Tamils over the Sinhalese as Ceylonese in

Malaya, the recruits to the Lanka Unit were mainly young

Sinhalese…”, and that “… with only about twenty-five persons,

the Unit was only symbolic and not a fighting unit ... just for

propaganda… But for a few of the Sinhalese who enlisted in the

Lanka Unit there was a more physical role as well, for this

diminutive unit was the military arm of the Ceylon Department

while espionage and sabotage were its aims”(Arseculeratne,

1991).

As of the Indians who joined the INA, the Sinhalese who enlisted were

motivated by self-preservation or the opportunity for returning to Ceylon while

on apparently revolutionary activities there, rather than by real revolutionary

zeal. Although the CD and the LU have had no mention at all in commentaries on

the Indian Independence Movement, except in the book mentioned above



(Arseculeratne, 1991), a few of their Sinhalese members participated in

dangerous missions in the Japanese-sponsored Indian revolutionary movement.

The initial successes of the Japanese army and the INA in their drive towards

Imphal, the capital of Manipur district in north-eastern India along the Burmese

border, received headlines in the Malayan newspapers of 1942: “April 21 –

BATTLE FOR IMPHAL REACHING CLIMAX; APRIL 23 – OUR FORCES WITHIN 12

MILES OF IMPHAL; APRIL 26 – IMPHAL'S SOUTHERN DEFENCES COLLAPSE”.

This discussion attempts to fill gaps in the documentation of these thactivities through personal interviews on the 50 anniversary of the Quit India

rebellion in India of 1942, with some members of the Marxist parties in post-war

Sri Lanka. These interviews provide historical aspects of the left parties of Ceylon,

the Communist Party (CP) and the Lanka Samasamaja Party (LSSP)through the

views of important members of these two parties, on the anti-British

revolutionary activities in contemporary India; the gaps are illustrated by Peter

Ward Fay's book The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence

(Fay, 1994) that makes no mention of the Marxists' stand.

This review portrays the anti- British Imperialist stance of the Ceylonese

in Ceylon during World War II as more rhetorical than militaristic, contrasting

with the actions of some Indian anti-imperialists and Ceylonese in the Malay

Peninsula that were overtly militaristic and violent.

Personal interviews were made in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the early 1990s by

the author, with prominent 'Leftist' politicians in war-time Ceylon, on their

Parties' stands, mainly during the years 1942-1945: The Communist Party (CP) of

Ceylon- Pieter Keuneman, The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) - Hector

Abeyawardhana, Bernard Soysa, and A. Patchamuttu. A more recent interview

with LSSP member Ranjith Amarasinghe was done in 2010. This article



documents these personal reminiscences. These interviews are quoted verbatim

to provide an authentic background to the militarism, or absence of it, of the

citizens of Ceylon both in Ceylon and in the Malay Peninsula) in the anti-British

struggle. The interviews and quotations from the published literature are

italicized.

The salient topics that these interviews might shed some light on are:

(i) Ceylon and India were both under British colonial administration;

(ii) Revolutionary anti-British militant and terrorist activity occurred in India

but not in Ceylon;

(iii) Was the presence of Subhas Chandra Bose in India and Malaya, without

his presence and therefore influence in Ceylon, a determinant factor in

this difference?

(iv) Some Sinhalese emigrants in peninsular Malaya participated in Bose's

campaign and were even sent to Ceylon and India but were arrested and

executed by the British. Why were the Sinhalese in Ceylon similarly not

motivated, by Bose's anti-British campaign,to militarism?

The Ceylon Department and the Lanka Unit in Malaya

H. G. Gunapala who was in charge of the Lanka Unit recalled (Arseculeratne,

1991) his meeting with Netaji (Leader) Subhas Chandra Bose who said:

“India and Ceylon are under the British and we have been fighting

for so long”; Bose's view was that “… Ceylon was the pendant in

the Indian chain, both must hang together”,

while a Japanese propaganda notice to the peninsular Ceylonese declared “The

independence of Ceylon is inseparably linked with the independence of India”.

Bose himself was optimistic when he said (quoted by the Perak Times 2603,

[Japanese dating for 1943], 31 October):



“… the Sinhalese community out here shares with nationalists at home,

strong anti-British sentiments and aspirations for the freedom of Ceylon

from British rule”.

Gunapala had “a year's training in propaganda, - Hindi, Japanese - ,

military work such as the handling of arms and espionage”. Lionel Dodampe of

the Lanka Unit gave a more realistic view: “The two Ceylonese communities in

Malaya, had kept aloof from the activities of the Indian Independence League as

they rightly considered themselves not Indians”: Yet “Some members were

trained in Penang (Lebra, 1971); Batticaloa was one of the selected places…. The

first batch of Sinhalese included two Jayakody brothers, Piyasena, Christie

Seneviratne, Somananda and George Tallale”. The Jayakody brothers “.. ..were

sent to Ceylon on espionage transmission work in the jungles in Kirinda in south

Ceylon, but were caught and shot by the British”(Lebra, 1971). Ariyapala was

assigned to the 'Azad Hind Dal', formed in 1943 as the Reconstruction Unit of the

Indian Independence Movement and which was also for civil administration of

liberated territory (Arseculeratne, 1991). In the 1940s, Chelvasingham-

MacIntyre was the Vice-President of the Johore State branch of the (Indian

Independence) League. He wrote (Chelvasingham-MacIntyre, 1973):

“The majority of the (Peninsular) Ceylonese felt that the question

of Indian Independence was not their business, and, therefore,

they should not be taxed for contributions….. while we were thus

busy collecting funds, units of the INA, including the Rani of

Jhansi Regiment, were moved to the Burma Front, in readiness

for the invasion of India. I found the Ceylonese as a whole

antagonistic to the aims and objectives of the Indian

Independence League”,



confirming the views of other officials that anti-British revolution was not in the

minds of the Ceylonese.

Pieter Keuneman's Comments on the Stance of Ceylon's Communist Party

The Communist Party in Ceylon was formed in 1943. Its antecedents were

stated by Fernando (1992): “A minority group of so-called Stalinists led by Dr. S. A.

Wickremasinghe, M. G. Mendis, and Shanmugathasan were expelled from the

LSSP, They formed the United Socialists' Party, which later was to become the

Communist Party of Ceylon in 1943”.

Keuneman said:

“In 1940, we split away from the LSSP and formed the United

Socialists' Party”. The Second World War was now on “and it was

declared illegal and we went underground. There were reasons

of an international character, for the split and the attack on the

Soviet Union” (by Germany)“was one. When only Britain was

against Germany, we were anti-Fascist and opposed to the war.

We kept cropping-up under different names such as the 'anti-

Japanese Propaganda Centre and to the anti-Japanese

propaganda, we added Communist propaganda as well. We

emerged after 1943. Even with our support for the war, we were

banned by the British. The Party was prohibited by the defense

regulations, it was declared illegal and its activities prohibited. Yet

we were now overt but nothing was done to us”.

In the first phase of the war, the Communist Party actively opposed

Indian participation in an imperialist's war; however with the German invasion of

the Soviet Union in 1941, they shifted ground. With the Soviet Union now in the

fray, the Communist Party supported the war and was thus at odds with the LSSP.



It was, through its anti-Fascist stand, anti-Japanese as well. Netaji Bose's anti-

British Indian National Army was now in formation.

Keuneman continued:

“We had no sympathy for Bose. We thought of him as a puppet of

the Japanese militarists, although earlier we respected his anti-

colonial stand. He made the mistake of thinking 'the enemy of our

enemy is our friend'. Bose's movement did not have much

influence here” (in Ceylon) although the Indian Independence

Movement had a far greater impact. We, in Ceylon, did not

actively support the British but did not engage in strikes”.

The Communists in Malaya however, through their Malayan Peoples

Anti-Japanese Army(Arseculeratne, 1991) and collusion with “Force 136”,

supported the war against the Japanese. N. Shanmugathasan, the Tamil

Communist Party member from Ceylon attended the All-India Trade Union

Congress in India in 1945, and Prasad (1979) wrote“…. Sanghamugha Das” (sic):

”The Ceylonese delegate… assured the Indians that the Ceylonese people would

give their whole-hearted support to the cause of Indian independence”.

The Lanka SamaSamaja Party (LSSP) was formed in 1935. In place of the

Poppy flower that symbolized the Allies' war of 1914-1918, a 'Surya-flower'

campaign was launched “…on an anti-imperialist and anti-war basis”. Links were

formed with the (Indian) Congress Socialist Party. From the view point of

popularity of the movement, it is noteworthy that, although a police permit was

obtained for a 'street collection', “…they did not proceed with it on 11. 11. 40”

which, “According to the police this was due to their inability to muster sufficient

volunteers“(Muthiah and Wanasinghe, 1996). It is evident that according to the

views expressed by the Party leaders (Muthiah and Wanasinghe, 1996) no



militancy was shown by the “left-oriented” parties in support of the anti-British

struggle of Subhas Chandra Bose in India and the Malay peninsula.

Hector Abeyawardhana's Views on the Stance of Trotskyite LSSP

Abeyawardhana said:

“The LSSP was formed in 1935 to take the place of the CP

elsewhere. There was no real differentiation between the

Marxists on international issues. In 1935, Marxism was general

and vague, hinged against Imperialism. Marxists books were not

available here. Therefore access to literature was available only thto those who went abroad. The 4 International of Trotskyites was

set up in 1938. In 1935, the LSSP was called a party for

Independence and Socialism. We didn't know about Trotsky who

worked under difficult conditions under Stalin. Trotsky was killed

in 1940. All shades of left opinion were incorporated in the LSSP.

P.Keuneman was in Cambridge and S.A. Wicks was here. N. Shan

was just raw and with me in the university College”.

On S. C. Bose, Abeyawardhana said:

“I heard about Bose, as a student in the University College, and

was interested in what was happening in India. We were aware of

Congress socialist issues. Bose did not belong to the Left Wing of

the Congress Party. Bose's credentials were derived from the

radical stand he took on the confrontation with imperialists. The

entire socialist group was opposed to the dilly-dallying that went

on with Gandhi versus British imperialists. This had grown under

Nehru”.

“They built up a left-wing in Congress for full independence and

for launching a struggle as soon as possible for independence. The



Congress Socialist Party with MinuMassani, A. Patvardan,

RamManolohiyar as Editors of the 'Congress Socialist' with

Jayaprakash Narayan. CSP formed in 1935. It exchanged views

with the LSSP in public campaigns to build up the party all over

Ceylon”.

In reply to the question: “Why was not this entire history of the LSSP's anti-

imperialist struggle documented at the time?”Abeyawardhana replied:

“We didn't document things at that time because it was

conspiratorial. We were reluctant to document what happened

because whatever was recorded had to be formally approved by

the Party. All these were rationalizations. In the pre-war phase,

the LSSP functioned as a loose mass party, and all its activities

were conducted publicly. No special need arose, therefore, for

particular documentation. Following the outbreak of the war, the

whole character of the party was transformed and the orthodox

Leninist model of organization was adopted. The emphasis of

such activity had to be largely conspiratorial. Some form of party

archives was maintained officially but most of these archives

were later seized by the police both here and in India. No

continuity of record keeping was therefore possible in conditions

of illegality. This attitude appeared to dominate the approaches

of the Party leaders, to the keeping of diaries, note-books and

other records even subsequently. There was almost a prohibition

that operated with regard to personal record keeping”.

“Our involvement in politics lacked a certain breadth of history,

ideology and acquaintance with world events which was largely a

consequence of a mechanical view of revolution. We believed

that the process of revolution was laid bare by the Russian

Revolution and by its exposition. We even classified the process of



revolution in terms of a number of stages made inevitable and

unchangeable by the victorious revolution in the Soviet Union. We

didn't have an anti-imperialist struggle in this country”.

Abeyawardhana explained why this was so:

“We didn't have a social class which felt its interests had been

compromised. The difference in India was that the conquest of

India by the East India Company and later the British was a long

and continuing process which never reached finality. British rule

was therefore always an issue. It's impossible to say that any

sections of the Indian population had (irreversibly) benefited

from the British regime. Masses here were not concerned. The

LSSP constituted the first genuine attempt to reject British rule

and to end it”.

Fernando's comments (Fernando, 1992) expanded on Abeyawardhana's

views: The LSSP

“held the Ceylon Revolution did not warrant the assumption that

British power could be overthrown in Ceylon with the internal

forces alone. This was because there was no capitalist class

proper which was strong enough to take the responsibility for the

country as a whole. The working class did not have the strength

nor the cohesion to perform this task, either. The LSSP decided

that this task could be accomplished only if the anti-imperialist

movements joined hands with the mighty independence

movement in India”.

Abeyawardhana had views on Bose:

“Bose first belonged to an important political family in Bengal.

Sarat and Subhas were a part of the nationalist tradition. Their

distinctiveness was the inability of the Bengali intelligentsia in



India. The Bengali intelligentsia was the vehicle of the spread of

British culture. It was the real expression of the new set of rulers.

Yet the Bengali intelligentsia didn't capitulate to the British. The

educational system produced the cogs for the British”.

Abeyawardhana's comment was significant:

“We didn't have an anti-imperialist struggle in this country”,

contrasting with the struggle waged in India and by the

revolutionaries in Malaya (qv). “The educational system

produced the cogs for the British” .

which is perhaps why the Tamils in Ceylon with excellent schools

modelled on British lines did not participate in anti-British activities. With the

South Indian Tamils in Ceylon who were imported for the plantations in Ceylon,

there was no leftist political activism except in parochial labour disputes and

strikes.

Anti-British terrorism was not tied up with left politics; it was a negation

of left politics. It substituted for the masses of the people the heroism of a few

gun-toting individuals”. This explanation appears valid for the Sinhalese

revolutionaries in Malaya.It appears that the difference between the anti-

imperialist but revolutionary terrorist movement and the anti-imperialist left

movement was therefore in political ideology and the bases of their support.

Abeywardena said:

“The LSSP looked upon Subhas Chandra Bose as a militant

nationalist and he represented the nationalist struggle more than

Gandhi. We emotionally or instinctively endorsed the political

platform of Subhas Chandra Bose”.



“When I went to Bombay in April 1942, we collected a lot of

information on S. C. Bose. When Bose left India, the Forward Bloc”

(party) “collapsed but till then it was a raging fire. There was a

story we heard in Bombay. Bose had addressed a political meeting

at Matunga near Bombay which was inhabited largely by South

Indians. He lectured on the Forward Bloc. At the end he asked the

crowd: 'I would like to find out what impact I have had on you. Will

those of you who are leftists put up their hands'. There was no one

who did. 'Will the rightists put up their hands' Again no one did.

Bose said 'Please explain'. 'We are neither leftists nor rightists.

We are typists (clerks). Political concepts had not penetrated

their consciousness' “.

“With the outbreak of the 'Quit India' movement in August 1942,

the one issue that divided the Congress between Gandhi and

Bose, was removed. Our stance was full support and

participation. In Ceylon we did not have a large LSSP

membership, between 150 and 200 members, although

membership was open. We needed an intellectual approach and

had study classes but the process was slow”.

With the outbreak of the Japanese war, the LSSP was proscribed and its

leaders fled to India in early 1942. Abeywardena was arrested in July 1943.

Abeywardena continued:

“I was brought back to Ceylon along with Philip Gunawardena

and N.M.Perera and detained in Kandy towards the end of 1943. I

was subsequently conditionally released and placed under police

scrutiny in Colombo. I then decided to break the condition I had

agreed to and to return to India which was a few months later”.



Abeyawardhana, then in Ceylon, commented on the anti-British

Ceylonese units in war-time Malaya, the Ceylon Department (CD) and the

Lanka Unit (LU):

“We hadn't heard of the CD and the LU nor did Jack Kotelawala”

(kinsman of the CD and LU leader Gladwin Kotelawala), “tell us. I

didn't associate Gladwin with this kind of activity”.

His view agreed with that of Lionel Dodampe that Gladwin played his role

in the CD and LU, not on political grounds but for the purpose of shielding the

Ceylonese from Japanese harassment.

“We thought S. C. Bose was supporting a Fascist movement

especially after he had gone to Berlin. We rejected that”.

It is recorded that Bose was critical of Hitler's views expressed in the

latter's biography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), especially of his anti-Semitism.,

and Bose told Hitler that; Hitler altered some passages in his biography after

listening to Bose. It should be remembered that Bose had another, perhaps more

cogent reason for travelling to Berlin; at that time there were Indian prisoners of

war who had been members of the British Indian Army. Bose's aim was to have

these Indians as the nucleus of a western wing ofthe Indian National Army that

was formed in the Malay peninsula.

Abeyawardhana continued on the Communist Party (CP):

“Beginning with the outbreak of war in 1939, it became plain that

the Communist Party had a problem with strategy and tactics in

relation to war, as an independent act on their part. They were

tied up with loyalty to the Soviet Union and the Communists. They

literally repeated the stance of the Soviet Union and the

Comintern. With the war, the CP was on the wrong foot. They



persisted in support for France and Britain continuing the popular

front line of the prewar years against the Fascists of Hitler and

Italy. Communist parties all over were told this was an imperialist

war. Three months later from September 1939, the CP

International got its leading organs together. Dimitrov exposited

the CP line that there was no question of fighting Fascists and

promoting democracy; this was an imperialist war on both sides.

It (CP) supported Britain when the Nazis invaded the USSR”.

On the scene in Ceylon:

“We did not know of JR's (Jayewardena's ) stance till recently. All

we knew was that detachments were marching at the head of

Japanese forces to Imphal. Lots of news were censored. This had

an ambivalent impact on nationalist elements in India; there was

joy with some. This was however not the orthodox view. Nehru

had made it clear that he would not be accused of equivocality

towards the Fascists. I was in Delhi during the INA trials. There

was a tremendous surge of mass opinion in defense of them”.

The use of violence would have meant anti-state action.

“In Bombay jail we had the 'bombers', the arms users and the

'fighters' who were thinking in terms of a social struggle,

organizing workers and students…. The British emphasized that

violence was taboo. The use of violence would have meant anti-

state actions and therefore much sacrifice for the ordinary

individual. Non-violence was therefore theoretical and not

philosophical. Had Bose been permitted to be the leader of

Congress, Britain would have taken him in and smashed the

terrorist movement. The arrest of Gandhi had a greater social



impact. Gandhi's strategy was to make it possible for the people

of India to appreciate the need to participate in a common

struggle for freedom. S. C. Bose was more sophisticated and

represented the intelligentsia of Bengal. They were never a part of

the masses but only spoke on behalf of the masses”.

“Yet there were rebels like the Boses. Bengal had generated a

terrorist movement unlike the other parts of India. These terrorist

were there before Gandhi,eg. RB Bose. There was therefore a

violent movement in Bengal than elsewhere except possibly in

Punjab. SC Bose was the inheritor of a tradition in Bengal which

did not exist in other parts of India. This made it possible for the

Congress Party to function as it did elsewhere. Proscription of

leftist parties occurred in British Ceylon but not in British India”.

Comments of Bernard Soysa (Lanka SamaSamajaParty,LSSP, 1992)

“A number of Ceylonese students met at the Ceylon Students'

Union, London in the 1930s, NM, Colvin, and Leslie

Goonawardena. Philip” (Gunawardena) in the US, was associated

with Indian politics there, with Jayaprakash Narayan in

Wisconsin, the Bengal Labour Party member Niharendu Dutt

Mazumdar and with Scott Nearing, the US Professor of Political

Science. He shared their anti-British and socialist views. Their turn

to socialism and Marxism was promoted by their study of

economics, and the Great Depression of the late 20s. Capitalism

had failed”.

“These Ceylonese students came from the English-educated, well-

to-do sections of society”, and thus bore a similarity to the Bengali



intellectuals, Bose and others. “There were other people of that

stratum of society who shared some of these views but were not

driven to open politics against the British. Only the LSSP did so. In

Bengal too, with the cultural renaissance, there were other

middle class intellectuals who weren't however violently anti-

imperialist. There was organization in Ceylon in parallel with the

Indian National Congress. There was nothing anti-imperialist

after PurangAppu. We had no base. We in Ceylon depended on

the plantation economy of the British. We had no traditional

militancy as in India. There was violent anarchism in India as in

Russia with Bakunin as its proponent and its anti-Czar anarchism;

they believed that only terrorism would work”, as did the Marxist

Janatha Vimukthi Permuna (JVP) in Sri Lanka.

“In India, anti-imperialism took the form of petitions and later

violence against officials. The terrorism was rooted in Bengal: for

example, Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad. Then came

Mahatma Gandhi with civil disobedience. Indian believed that

Gandhi's non-violence arose to quieten the workers, for his

support of the land-lords. He dreaded violence and thought that

the masses in action cannot be controlled. My own belief is that

no one practised non-violence except Gandhi himself. This

opposition was not the only factor that led to Indian

independence; it was also British weakness. The anti-British stand

precipitated independence after World War II”.

“Came World War II. J. R. Jayewardene went to Bombay to

attend the Congress sessions. I saw him with, I think, Mr. C. P. G.

Abeywardena in a bookshop on Hornby Road, the day before the

'Quit India' resolution was passed. They did not know at the time



that Dr. Colvin R. de Silva and Philip Gunawardena, Leslie

Goonawardena and Vivienne, V. Karalasingham, and (C. P. G.

Abeaywardhana's cousin) Hector were in a Northern suburb of

Bombay, planning ways of joining the 'Quit India' struggle. J. R. J.

came back to the Island much impressed by what he had heard

and seen. He sponsored a resolution in 1942 for 'Freedom' and

these new 'radicals' of the Congress hoped the Japanese would

come here and help to remove British imperialism. That this might

mean only replacement of one imperialism by another had not

apparently occurred to them. Mr. D. S. Senanayake remained the

leader of the Congress even when he was in a minority when in

1942, the radicals had their resolution adopted. His view was that

friendship and co-operation with the British in their time of

trouble, would bring results after the war. India will be free”.

“The same view about the future was held by Pandit Nehru. In a

letter of 1940 to JRJ: 'Personally I am convinced that, whatever the

result of the war may be, the British Empire cannot survive, nor

can such spread-out empires exits in the future'. We had no

armed revolt for a hundred years. We had no movements of

opposition to foreign rule like those led by the Kuomintang or the

Indian National Congress. We had no civil disobedience struggles.

What pressures were there on the British? Whatever there was in

the Island, is referred to by D. S. Senanayake: 'I tell the British, you

have no friends among the youth. Not only my son and his friends,

all the youths are against you; theSamasamajists are already in

jail ' ”.



“The LSSP formed a link with the Indians through the BLP-I in

1939/40. Philip formed links with Jayaprakash Narayan and the

Congress Socialist Party (formed in 1934/5/6). Some Indians,

Indrasen Gupta, Oncannath Shashtri, Kamalesh Bannerjee, came

to Ceylon in 1940, to consolidate the BLP-I. for anti-imperialism,

and socialist reconstruction. The BLP-I had branches in Bombay,

Madras, Allahabad, and Madurai. It had some influence with the

university students and intellectuals. Yet there was no main base

in Ceylon and with émigré revolutionaries, we couldn't build up a

revolutionary movement”.

“After the 1939 Tripura Congress meeting, the right wing

of Congress turned against Bose. The Congress Socialist Party

existed before Bose's time. Ceylon had no Gandhi. The LSSPers

who met in London in the 1930s believed that there was no one to

fight British imperialism. In 1935, a Youth League outside the LSSP

was formed which included English-speaking professionals. This

was also anti-imperialist and opposed the Poppy Day because of

alleged discrimination against the Ceylonese servicemen,

especially in funds. The Surya-mal campaign was started by S. A.

Wickremasinghe and others. In 1935, the LSSP joined with some

of these people though the Youth League itself fizzled out. S. A.

Wickremasinghe joined the Communist Party in Britain while we

drifted away from Stalinism into Trotskyism. In the event of a war

against Germany, USSR will fight with Britain. Therefore we

disliked the Stalinists and there occurred the split into the

orthodox Stalinists in the United Socialist Party which became the

Communist Party after 1942, and the LSSP. The Trotskyists

expelled the Stalinists in Ceylon”.



“The CP was opposed to the war but when Germany invaded

Russia, the CP turned a somersault and supported the war and

was thus opposed to the LSSP. In 1938 we saw the development of

the alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan. We knew of

Japanese imperialism against China and with the Sino-Japanese

war we saw the menace of the Japanese imperialists in the East.

Therefore the LSSP had no truck with Japan. We did not want a

change of masters”.

Bernard Soysa continued on Bose:

“We knew about Bose although there was little news here about

the INA. He was an intellectual giant in his own right. We didn't

completely agree with Bose. He accepted Marxism to some

degree. After the Forward Bloc was formed, we kept in touch with

Sarkar, journalist of the FB, but we later lost touch till we met in an

Indian jail. We did not relish terrorism because we felt it couldn't

succeed. We believed in mass struggle and we were against

Japanese imperialism and therefore we had no truck with S. C.

Bose. Bose failed partly because he was not with the proletariat. If

he remained in Congress and with the 'Quit India' movement, he

would have done more although he would have courted arrest”.

On the post-war scene in Ceylon, he commented:

“The match workers went on strike. Other workers in the

Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving mills and the Port, also

supported the strike at their meeting at Price Park, Colombo in

1946. After their warrants for arrest were withdrawn, Colvin, NM,

and Leslie came to Ceylon and spoke at the meeting. Colvin spoke

in Sinhala and in English, and praised the Red Fort prisoners”.



Supplementary views were provided by Abeyawardhana in an interview with

Premil Ratnayake (Ratnayake, 1992); he commented on a difference of opinion

between the CP and the LSSP. In the context of the Quit India Movement

“… the CP took up the position that there was little possibility of

rallying round the working class in favour of the movement. But

we in the BLP disagreed with this contention ''.

On the question why the BLP/LSSP went to India, Abeyawardhana commented:

“We went to India not because we were fleeing the police here. …

We went because we made a close examination of the situation in

Ceylon and arrived at the conclusion that a relationship of all the

forces in our society were extremely unlikely by themselves to

conduct a revolutionary struggle against the British and make it

succeed. We didn't have the strength nor the sound organization

to go for such a task”.

The absence of Bose's anti-British influence on the Sinhalese in Ceylon may now

be considered. As Bernard Soysa stated of the situation in Ceylon: there was

”No Bose, no revolutionary leader, no contact with Bose in India,

no motivation from history, life was comfortable. Other parts of

India shared these features that accounted for the absence of

terrorist anti-British activity. Bengal went along with Gandhi but

there was dissent”.

Thus the Sinhalese in Ceylon did not have the opportunity to hear or even

see or meet Subhas Chandra Bose, the founder and Head of the Indian

Independence League and Indian Independence Army in Malaya, who would

have infused militant anti-British revolutionary activities, but in Malaya (now



Malaysia), it's approximately 5000 Sinhalese met, heard Subhas Chandra Bose

and were impressed by his fiery anti-British speeches.

The difference of opinion between Bose and the LSSP was due to the lack

of mass support (of the latter) and support of the Fascists. As pointed out earlier

(Arseculeratne, 1991) the motivation for Gladwin in his sponsorship the anti-

British CD and LU was probably his over-riding concern to protect the peninsular

Sinhalese (and Ceylon Tamils) from Japanese harassment and not for political

(anti-British) revolutionary reasons. J.C.T. (Jack) Kotelawala (Joint Secretary, 1935

– 1940, and General Secretary 1940 – 1942 (LSSP) was interviewed by this author

in 1991. He persuaded his brother Sir Henry Kotelawala, with the help of Sri John

Kotelawala, to have Gladwin Kotelawala released from arrest after Gladwin came

back to Ceylon after the war. J. C. T. recalled that Gladwin then became a loyal

supporter of the right-wing United National Party, and was even conferred the

title of Member of the British Empire (MBE). Gladwin's shift to the 'right' from an

apparent allegiance to the 'left' during the war, also supports the idea that

Gladwin's war-time apparent support for the anti-British CD and the LU as

derivatives of the Indian Independence Movement, was not really through

political commitment to the anti-British 'Left'.

The views of A. Patchamuttu, (Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaja Party - LSSP)

Patchamuttu recalled that:

“In India, especially after the 'Quit India' movement, aroused

support for the 'Free India' movement'. However, while the

overwhelming support of the Indians in Ceylon was for Gandhi

and his 'Quit India' policy, the younger elements were attracted by

Bose and his INA. The propaganda machine of the INA had its

message on Indian freedom beamed on Ceylon as well: 'Free



India' broadcasts translated into Tamil were heard from

Japanese-occupied Malaya and Burma”.

Patchamuttu commented on his party's anti-British stand:

“The LSSP, of course, did not believe in that (Bose's) type of action

by using the Japanese army” (to overthrow the British). Our

political philosophy was that we had to mobilize the working class

and, through combined action of the working class, with the

support of the militia and the peasantry, we could go forward to a

revolutionary capture of power”.

Patchamuttu dissented with Bose's collaboration with the Japanese army:

“We could not capture power through a third army; we would only

have been an instrument of that army”. His view was, on the other

hand, congruous with that of the Indian leaders; “In a press

conference a few days earlier, Nehru noted that Bose had parted

company from 'us' meaning presumably, the Congress leadership,

some years earlier”.

“We parted company with him many years ago. Since then we

have drifted further apart, and today we are very far from each

other….. But I do realize that the way he had chosen is utterly

wrong, a way which I not only cannot accept but oppose, if it takes

shape. Because any force that may come from that may come

from outside, will really come as a dummy force under Japanese

control. It is a bad thing psychologically for the Indian masses to

think in terms of being liberated by an outside agency”.



The views of Ranjith Amarasinghe (LSSP)

Ranjith Amarasinghe said that:

“Very few writings are available on the LSSP's stance in the

revolutionary activities of Bose, the IIL and the INA”;

the reasons were clarified at the end of this interview.

”During the pre-World-War II years, the revolutionary-minded

people of Ceylon, who later became the LSSP, were in touch with

the Indian radical groups of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party (BLP);

people from India and Burma, such as Saumendranath Bose were

involved in the cities of Bombay, Madras“(Chennai)”and Calcutta,

but Ceylon was not mentioned as a separate country; it was

considered a part of India. The BLP of India and the Ceylonese

were not allied to Bose but they appreciated his stance against the

British. The Ceylonese group considered Bose as an adventurist

and a Fascist” (the latter particularly after his meeting Hitler and

Mussolini in 1934), “and that Bose's armed nationalist struggle

with the bourgeoisie as ineffective, and they rather thought that

mobilisation of the working classes was the proper move, and

that an international movement was needed, contrary to Lenin's

view that only a single country be tied to these efforts. Hence

arose the divide between the 3rd International of the Stalinists thand the latter LSSP's 4 International that was formed in 1935”.

“The LSSP was formed in 1935, and in later years N. M. Perera and

Philip Gunawardena were the main figures. The ideological

differences between the Trotskyites in the LSSP and that of other

groups allied to the Soviet Union intensified, the main focus



having been their involvement with the proletariat while the

Soviet Union's affiliations were with the bourgeoisie. The

dissenters belonged to the incipient Communist party”.

Meanwhile in India, Bose resigned from the Presidency of the

Indian Congress and formed the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934

(Gordon, 1989), “…with whom the LSSP was in touch and even

participated in the CSP sessions in India”. M. N. Roy, Jawaharlal Nehru

and S.C . Bose encouraged the formation of the CSP but did not join it

(Gordon, 1989).

“When Bose headed the Indian Independence League (IIL) and the

Indian National Army in war-time Malaya, the LSSP in Ceylon

were convinced that he was an adventurist as they thought

militant nationalism was not the anti-British answer but that

mobilisation of the plantation and urban workers was the only

effective strategy. In short, Bose's appeal was on nationalism,

which the LSSP thought was not a class-struggle, while the

Trotskyite LSSP's efforts were with the proletariat, working

classes. This explains the non-development of links with Bose's

activities in the Malay Peninsula, though both the Trotskyites and

Bose's IIL and INA were anti-British”.

Amarasinghe's last comment was significant in the contrast between the

Bose-sponsored CD and LU in Malaya with their revolutionary activities, and the

non-violent, anti-British pronouncements of the Trotskyite party in Ceylon.

3. General discussion

In conclusion, a comparison of the anti-British revolutionary activities in

India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Malaya (now Malaysia) could now be made; in



India, the revolutionaries had their rhetoric, with sporadic violence as when Rash

Behari Bose threw a bomb at British Viceroy Hardinge, in Delhi in 1912 while in

1942, Indian “…youth took to manufacturing bombs in a big way” . (Abeyawardhana to Premil Ratnayake in Ratnayake, 1992) The INA marched with

the Japanese, across the Burma-India border into the Kohima-Imphal theatre of

the war, in March 1944; by April 25, the Malayan newspapers reported that:

“Imphal's southern defenses collapse”. The INA with the sponsorship of Netaji

Bose had their revolutionaries joining in the campaign across the Burma border,

in India;that campaign was ultimately fruitless, as Stephen Cohen commented

(Cohen, 1990) ,“Terrorism, infiltration, and subversion were never effective

political instruments in India”.

In Ceylon, the revolutionary parties had their rhetoric, but without

physical, revolutionary action. As Hector Abeyawardhana said: “We didn't have

the strength nor the sound organization to go for such a task”. As supplementary

reasons, Abeyawardhana commented to Ratnayake (Ratnayake, 1992),

“In our country there was no great struggle against British

Imperialism. Most of our people were supporters of the British.

They were the capitalists with the bourgeosie hang-over of the

British”.

Would the non-politically aligned, working class have had the

sophisticated thinking to appreciate the revolutionary anti-British struggle of

their party. If not, could this have been a reason for the absence of their

militancy, apart from trade union strikes?. It is relevant in this regard to quote

K.M. de Silva (1973); he commented:

“The party (LSSP) organization was elitist in conception, and as a

result it remained a small band of urban intellectuals with a

modest political base rather than an effective national political

force, unlike the Indian National Army and its militant



revolutionaries…. The failure to build up a rural organization save

in the Kelani Valley, could be explained, partly at least, by political

immaturity of a largely illiterate, recently enfranchised and quite

unorganized rural population.”

K.M.de Silva's first sentence that the LSSP remained a small band does

not explain the absence of militarism, for it was the single-handed Rash Behari

Bose who, by throwing his bomb at the Viceroy, initiated the INA and the anti-

British revolutionary action. There could have been another reason for the lack

of overt anti-British militarism in Ceylon, contrasting with overt violence in India

when Rash Behari Bose had thrown his bomb; in Ceylon there was no such-

example of direct militarism to provide a precedent. It is ironical that despite the

sound and fury of the anti-British rhetoric of the Leftist political party members

in war-time Ceylon, it was left to four young Sinhalese in the Malay Peninsula to

participate actively in anti-British revolutionary militarism but these young

Sinhalese paid for it with their lives. Indrasoma recalled (Arseculerane, 1991)

that two of them,

“The two Jayakody brothers had volunteered to go to Ceylon by

submarine. They were off-loaded near Madras and were caught

by the British… and were executed by the British military as they

were Japanese agents”.

A philosophical comment deriving from the rich Indian religious and

philosophical traditions, could now be added. The conflicting views of the

persons who were involved in the Indian anti-British struggle, and the pros and

cons of the use of violence recall the advice given by Krishna to Arjuna on the eve

of the Kuru-Pandya war as related in the Indian epic poem The Mahabharata; it is

relevant to the anti-British armed conflict. Arjuna was to wage war against his

cousin and kinsmen, but was diffident to do so:



“And I see forebodings of evil, Krishna. I cannot see any glory if I

kill my own kinsmen in the sacrifice of battle”.Krishna replied:

“Think thou, also of thy duty and do not waver. There is no

greater good for a warrior than to fight a righteous war”.

“If Bose did indeed derive the message from the Bhagavad Gita, it

was through Aurobindo Ghose who says in The Doctrine of

Passive Resistance (Gordon, 1989), 'Under certain circumstances

a civil struggle becomes in reality a battle and the morality of war

is different from the morality of peace. To shrink from blood-shed

and violence under such circumstances is a weakness deserving as

severe a rebuke as Krishna addressed to Arjuna when he shrank

from the colossal civil slaughter on the field of Kurukshetra' “

(Arseculeratne, 1996).

A parallel in reality can also be drawn. During World War II, Churchill

sought collaboration with the Russians whom he hated, to fight a worse evil –

Germany. Stalin had plenty of skeletons in his Gulag and Siberian cupboards, as

much as Hitler had. The stance of Churchill seems to vindicate Bose's seeking the

help of the Germans and the Italians against, what he thought was, the greater

evil - British Imperialism. Read and Fisher (1982) recalled a “famous message”,

one of Churchill's greatest speeches in June 1941, having earlier given Stalin

warning of the plans of the “bloodless guttersnipe, the monster of wickedness” in

Berlin. It is of interest to compare Churchill's stance with that of Bose that earned

him opprobrium not only in Congress members, but also, much later, from

readers of the Bose saga.



References

Arseculeratne, S. N. (1991), Sinhalese immigrants in Malaysia and Singapore

1860 - 1990: History through Recollections, Colombo, K. V. G. de Silva and Sons.

Arseculeratne, S. N. (1996), Subhas Chandra Bose's anti-British war as a

righteous war, A Dharma yudhaya, The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities.

Chelvasingham-ManIntyre, S. (1973), Through Memory Lane, Singapore,

University Education Press.

Cohen, Stephen P. (1990), The Indian Army: Its contribution to the development

of a nation, New Delhi, Oxford University Press.

de Silva, K. M. (1973), History of Ceylon (ed.), Vol. 3, Peradeniya, University of

Ceylon Press.

Fay, Peter Ward. (1994), The Forgotten Army; India's armed struggle for

independence 1942 – 1945, Calcutta, Rupa & Company.

Fernando, Amaradasa. (1992), LSSP relives 'Quit India', The Sunday Times, (Sri

Lanka), 9 August 1992.

Gordon, Leonard, (1989), Brothers against the Raj, New Delhi, Penguin Books.

Lebra, Joyce C. (1971), Jungle Alliance: Japan and the Indian National Army,

Singapore, Asia Pacific Press.



Muthiah, Wesley S. and Wanasinghe, Sydney , (1996), Britain, World War 2 and

the Samasamajists. Colombo 6, A Young Socialist Publication.

Prasad, B. (1979), Indian Nationalism and Asia, Delhi, B. R. Publication Company.

Ratnayake, Premil. (1992), Fifty years ago – Samasamajists joined Indian

Freedom Fighters, Golden Jubilee of the 'Quit India Movement' , The Island

Saturday Magazine, 8 August, 1992.

Read, Anthony and Fisher, David (1982), Operation Lucy: Most secret spy ring of

The second world war, London, Sphere Books.



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